The politics of personal destruction

Sarah J. McCarthy is a contributing editor and writer at Liberty Magazine and co-author with Ralph R. Reiland of "Mom & Pop
vs. the Dreambusters: The Small Business Revolt Against Big Government,"
now available at Amazon.com.

“Here was a president who, in order to protect himself, had put out the story that his former lover, less than half his age, was a ‘stalker,'” writes columnist Philip Weiss in the New York Observer. “Who could not feel hatred for such a person?”

Mr. Weiss has been writing about Clinton-hating and Bill Clinton’s politics of intimidation ever since the New York Times sent him to Little Rock in 1997 to write a cover story called the Clinton Haters, the crazy-quilt of colorful people that includes Larry Nichols, Linda Ives, Gennifer Flowers, Jerry Parks and a growing assortment of widows, orphans and former beauty queens who at various times were convinced that Clinton operatives were threatening to break their knee caps or trying to kill them, their family, their next door neighbors or their cats. Weiss is a New York liberal, a Clinton voter, but between the lines in “The Clinton Haters” you could tell that it was beginning to dawn on Weiss that maybe the wing-nuts weren’t so crazy after all.

Even though aging flower child author Erica Jong still thinks that the only thing wrong with Bill Clinton is that he’s being pursued by a God Squad of crazed prisses led by Henry Hyde and Ken Starr, if she gave much thought to the Clinton-related body count lists, including more than a few plane crashes, she might have reason for a whole new book about “Fear Of Flying.” The real case against Bill Clinton isn’t about sex at all, but about intimidation, about what former Clinton advisor Dick Morris calls Clinton’s Secret Police.

“My big issue is intimidation by Clinton goons,” explains Phil Weiss to Tony, former keyboard player for the band Yes, and who, along with Weiss, was in Washington, D.C., to attend the Free Republic rally for Impeachment. Weiss asked Tony about women on the road. “Every night, a different town, and there were always women,” Tony replied. “For a good 20 years, I lived that lifestyle. That’s rock-and-roll.”

Weiss asked Tony how, then, could he hold Clinton to a sexual standard. “With us, it was open,” he said. “We weren’t in office. We weren’t serving the people, we were serving an audience every night and went on stage, and yes, it’s a sexy profession. What we were doing, we didn’t have to intimidate women, we didn’t have to shut them up. Would it hurt our careers? Of course not.”

Yes, Tony of Yes, you’ve once again hit exactly the right note. In rock-and- roll there’s few phonies or hypocrites. What you see is what you get. But to try to combine the Office of the Presidency with the life of a sexually reckless libertine, one who enjoys throwing caution to the winds and watching a 21-year-old blabbermouth acrobat-intern doing cigar tricks, there is a problem, especially with the need to cover it up.

Every time this president cries about his condition and “the politics of personal destruction,” and how it is that they took a “wrecking ball” to him, we should just remember the words of Gennifer Flowers: “I felt vulnerable and scared — and for good reason. My apartment had been illegally entered on three separate occasions, and my life was threatened. I’ve seen what happens to people who try to cross Bill Clinton. As in the case of Mafia dons, it is never the Number One man who directly makes threats, much less commits acts of violence.” This statement was made shortly after Flowers’ neighbor, who happened to capture Governor Bill Clinton on videotape entering Flowers’ apartment with his own key, was beaten to within an inch of his life.

“The Friends Of Bill are quick with the other-guys-did-it-too argument, so comparisons to Warren Harding and Franklin Roosevelt abound,” writes columnist Nicholas Von Hoffman in the New York Observer. “The difference is they were smart enough or humble enough to keep their private parts private. Bill makes his private parts public, even while grousing about invasions of his privacy. The guy’s a flasher, complaining about people gawking at him. Hey, buddy, put on some clothes under the raincoat and you won’t have a problem.”

When Dolly Kyle Browning began a fictionalized account of her relationship with Clinton, she was smeared and threatened. “Our sexpig President is surrounded by enablers,” writes Weiss. “When I said that Mr. Clinton was ‘tough,’ former Arkansas State Police Director Lynn Davis corrected me,” said Weiss. “‘He’s not tough, he’s ruthless.'”

After all these years, Erica Jong and Alec Baldwin are still giggling over the crazed posse of prissies and sissies — all the Republican people who’ve never had sex trying to emasculate their handsome playboy President. “I want him alive from the waist down,” proclaimed Jong, “even if it’s with a blockhead intern.” But Erica, you aging dingbat, is the Big He alive from the neck up? Does this man have any judgment, any sense of decorum, any respect for his wife or child, for his office, for America’s children, or for Monica, the smitten young chick? Do you think it’s okay for Handsome to call Monica a psycho-stalker and deny their affair before the entire world? To perjure himself over it in a sexual harassment case?

So what, say the President’s flunkies, if Bill Clinton is the first president who needed a Bimbo Eruption Squad (really, shouldn’t it have been called the Male-Whore Eruption Squad)? For these pitiful apologists, it’s just another giggle when the Betsy Wright character in Primary Colors enforces silence for Bill Clinton by threatening bimbos at gunpoint. “What’s the big deal,” says Betty Friedan, “if Clinton did what he’s accused of doing?” Wasn’t Friedan one of those sexual harassment maniacs who wanted to bring down the house because Clarence Thomas rented a Long Dong Silver video and then mentioned it in the presence of Professor Hill?

It’ll be a wonderful day in America when Bill Clinton finally makes an honest man of himself and flies off to his new job at Dreamworks. Hollywood is where he belongs, swimming in starlets in a studio where they made Titanic. It’ll be hog heaven for him and the rest of us might finally get a real president.